Women Need Choice (Blog For Choice 2008)

[This updated version
of an original
blog post from January, 2008 was first posted
on the Reviewer
X blog on December 16, 2008.]

This updated version
of an original
blog post from January, 2008 was first posted
on the Reviewer
X blog on December 16, 2008. - See more at: file:///C:/Users/Acer/Documents/ckkellymartinweb/archive2112.htm#sthash.Nq3Fvoxb.dpuf

My young adult novel, I Know It’s Over, tells the story of sixteen-year-old
Nick, who learns on Christmas Eve that his ex-girlfriend
Sasha is pregnant. He’s panicked and has certain
feelings about how they should react to the situation.
Those feelings evolve during the course of the novel
but when it comes down to it, the choice isn’t
his to make – it’s Sasha’s.

This is a choice that women in many countries don’t
legally hold but a choice they insist on exercising
regardless. Legally or illegally. Safely or unsafely.
Their bodies. Their choice. A report by the Guttmacher
Institute and World Health Organization published in
2007 studied worldwide abortion trends from 1995 to
2003. It found that abortion rates are almost identical
in developed and developing regions of the world, but
that “abortion is generally safe where it is broadly
legal and mostly unsafe where restricted.” Globally
almost half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in the
deaths of 70,000 women each year. A further five million
suffer permanent or temporary injury.

With a lack of options at hand, women will do their
best to create them, despite the risks. Don’t
they deserve choice without risking personal harm?

According to Guttmacher Institute data the majority
of American women (61%) who have abortions already
have children (1). Almost half of pregnancies among
U.S. women are unintended and four out of ten choose
not to continue the pregnancy (2). One in three American
women will have had an abortion by the age of forty-five
(3).

Unwanted pregnancy isn’t rare. It’s something
that touches all of our lives, whether we’re
aware of it or not. It happens to our friends, our
mothers, ourselves, and I have faith in women and
girls to know what's best for them, whether that's
terminating an unplanned pregnancy, raising a child
or giving a baby up for adoption. Anyone who thinks
the choice is easy hasn't sat with an anguished friend
(or daughter, sister, wife or girlfriend) as they
struggled to make that decision.

Who are you or I to tell any woman what's in her
best interest? What freedom does she have without
the core right of bodily integrity? Yet many governments
feel this most personal decision isn't one a woman
should have. Several countries that consider themselves
democracies have tried to curtail choice or cut if
off completely. In the United States many individual
states have severely restricted access to abortion
procedures. In Canada, a country which currently has
no criminal law restricting abortion, the province
of Prince Edward Island refuses to provide any abortion
services, meaning women must travel to neighboring
provinces for procedures. Abortion is legal in New
Zealand, but only if two certifying consultants agree
that a pregnancy will either physically or psychologically
endanger a woman's health.

I believe Irish women shouldn't have to travel to
exercise choice. I don't believe women anywhere should
be subjected to unsafe, possibly fatal abortions because
you or I may not agree with their choice to terminate.
On this side of the Atlantic, I hope we never see
Roe
v. Wade overturned or watch Canada
abolish legal abortion but we can't afford to
be complacent and assume this will never happen. We
saw how reproductive health options in the United
States narrowed under George Bush’s government
as he loaded the supreme court with anti-choice judges;
championed abstinence only education which keeps young
people in the dark concerning accurate information
about preventing pregnancy and avoiding sexually transmitted
infections; and reinstated the Global
Gag Rule which blocks access to birth control
to thousands of women around the world. At home 87%
of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion
provider.

But choice isn’t just about access to safe,
legal abortions. It’s about health, information
and real options, and it’s of the utmost importance
that we vote in governments that support all of these
and that we continue to call attention to these issues
and don’t allow them to fall through the cracks.
We need to vote for and hold to account governments
that will support the wide availability of emergency
contraception to prevent pregnancy, comprehensive
sex education (we already know the abstinence only
variety doesn't work!),
committed anti-violence (a 2007 study found that
that a quarter of teenage girls with histories of
abusive relationships said that their abusive partners
had “tried to get them pregnant by manipulating
condom use, sabotaging birth control, and making explicit
statements about wanting them to become pregnant.”)
and anti-poverty strategies and access to affordable
contraception and medical treatment for all women.
We need to lobby for changes that will ensure the
minimum amount of women possible suffer unwanted pregnancies
and that every woman who wishes to keep her baby will
be assured of good health care and not be condemned
to poverty by her choice.

And in the inevitable event that women suffer unwanted
pregnancies despite the implementation of the above
safeguards (because the reproductive years are long,
mistakes happen and sometimes sexual assault denies
women a choice) we need to allow women access to safe
abortions, not punish them by forcing them to have
unwanted children or in effect push them into back
alley procedures.
Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it but it
does place women’s well-being – and sometimes
their very lives – at risk. We don’t have
to feel that we’d make the same choice about
a pregnancy as someone else to support a woman’s
right to choose. With what’s at stake how can
we possibly afford not to support choice?

My young adult novel, I
Know It’s Over, tells the story of sixteen-year-old
Nick, who learns on Christmas Eve that his ex-girlfriend
Sasha is pregnant. He’s panicked and has certain
feelings about how they should react to the situation.
Those feelings evolve during the course of the novel
but when it comes down to it, the choice isn’t
his to make – it’s Sasha’s.

This is a choice that women in many countries don’t
legally hold but a choice they insist on exercising
regardless. Legally or illegally. Safely or unsafely.
Their bodies. Their choice. A report by the Guttmacher
Institute and World Health Organization published in
2007 studied worldwide abortion trends from 1995 to
2003. It found that abortion rates are almost identical
in developed and developing regions of the world, but
that “abortion is generally safe where it is broadly
legal and mostly unsafe where restricted.” Globally
almost half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in the
deaths of 70,000 women each year. A further five million
suffer permanent or temporary injury.
With a lack of options at hand, women will do their
best to create them, despite the risks. Don’t
they deserve choice without risking personal harm?
According to Guttmacher Institute data the majority
of American women (61%) who have abortions already
have children (1). Almost half of pregnancies among
U.S. women are unintended and four out of ten choose
not to continue the pregnancy (2). One in three American
women will have had an abortion by the age of forty-five
(3).
Unwanted pregnancy isn’t rare. It’s something
that touches all of our lives, whether we’re
aware of it or not. It happens to our friends, our
mothers, ourselves, and I have faith in women and
girls to know what's best for them, whether that's
terminating an unplanned pregnancy, raising a child
or giving a baby up for adoption. Anyone who thinks
the choice is easy hasn't sat with an anguished friend
(or daughter, sister, wife or girlfriend) as they
struggled to make that decision.
Who are you or I to tell any woman what's in her
best interest? What freedom does she have without
the core right of bodily integrity? Yet many governments
feel this most personal decision isn't one a woman
should have. Several countries that consider themselves
democracies have tried to curtail choice or cut if
off completely. In the United States many individual
states have severely restricted access to abortion
procedures. In Canada, a country which currently has
no criminal law restricting abortion, the province
of Prince Edward Island refuses to provide any abortion
services, meaning women must travel to neighboring
provinces for procedures. Abortion is legal in New
Zealand, but only if two certifying consultants agree
that a pregnancy will either physically or psychologically
endanger a woman's health.
Ireland has even less regard for its female citizens'
ability to make decisions about their own bodies.
Abortion is illegal even in cases of threatened suicide
and only permitted when a woman's life is threatened
by grievous medical risk. This has resulted in a steady
stream of Irish women (approximately
7,000 a year, the majority of whom are married and
already have children) traveling to Great Britain
for abortions.
I believe Irish women shouldn't have to travel to
exercise choice. I don't believe women anywhere should
be subjected to unsafe, possibly fatal abortions because
you or I may not agree with their choice to terminate.
On this side of the Atlantic, I hope we never see
Roe
v. Wade overturned or watch Canada
abolish legal abortion but we can't afford to
be complacent and assume this will never happen. We
saw how reproductive health options in the United
States narrowed under George Bush’s government
as he loaded the supreme court with anti-choice judges;
championed abstinence only education which keeps young
people in the dark concerning accurate information
about preventing pregnancy and avoiding sexually transmitted
infections; and reinstated the Global
Gag Rule which blocks access to birth control
to thousands of women around the world. At home 87%
of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion
provider.
But choice isn’t just about access to safe,
legal abortions. It’s about health, information
and real options, and it’s of the utmost importance
that we vote in governments that support all of these
and that we continue to call attention to these issues
and don’t allow them to fall through the cracks.
We need to vote for and hold to account governments
that will support the wide availability of emergency
contraception to prevent pregnancy, comprehensive
sex education (we already know the abstinence only
variety doesn't work!),
committed anti-violence (a 2007 study found that
that a quarter of teenage girls with histories of
abusive relationships said that their abusive partners
had “tried to get them pregnant by manipulating
condom use, sabotaging birth control, and making explicit
statements about wanting them to become pregnant.”)
and anti-poverty strategies and access to affordable
contraception and medical treatment for all women.
We need to lobby for changes that will ensure the
minimum amount of women possible suffer unwanted pregnancies
and that every woman who wishes to keep her baby will
be assured of good health care and not be condemned
to poverty by her choice.
And in the inevitable event that women suffer unwanted
pregnancies despite the implementation of the above
safeguards (because the reproductive years are long,
mistakes happen and sometimes sexual assault denies
women a choice) we need to allow women access to safe
abortions, not punish them by forcing them to have
unwanted children or in effect push them into back
alley procedures.
Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it but it
does place women’s well-being – and sometimes
their very lives – at risk. We don’t have
to feel that we’d make the same choice about
a pregnancy as someone else to support a woman’s
right to choose. With what’s at stake how can
we possibly afford not to support choice?
- See more at: file:///C:/Users/Acer/Documents/ckkellymartinweb/archive2112.htm#sthash.Nq3Fvoxb.dpuf

My young adult novel, I
Know It’s Over, tells the story of sixteen-year-old
Nick, who learns on Christmas Eve that his ex-girlfriend
Sasha is pregnant. He’s panicked and has certain
feelings about how they should react to the situation.
Those feelings evolve during the course of the novel
but when it comes down to it, the choice isn’t
his to make – it’s Sasha’s.

This is a choice that women in many countries don’t
legally hold but a choice they insist on exercising
regardless. Legally or illegally. Safely or unsafely.
Their bodies. Their choice. A report by the Guttmacher
Institute and World Health Organization published in
2007 studied worldwide abortion trends from 1995 to
2003. It found that abortion rates are almost identical
in developed and developing regions of the world, but
that “abortion is generally safe where it is broadly
legal and mostly unsafe where restricted.” Globally
almost half of abortions are unsafe, resulting in the
deaths of 70,000 women each year. A further five million
suffer permanent or temporary injury.
With a lack of options at hand, women will do their
best to create them, despite the risks. Don’t
they deserve choice without risking personal harm?
According to Guttmacher Institute data the majority
of American women (61%) who have abortions already
have children (1). Almost half of pregnancies among
U.S. women are unintended and four out of ten choose
not to continue the pregnancy (2). One in three American
women will have had an abortion by the age of forty-five
(3).
Unwanted pregnancy isn’t rare. It’s something
that touches all of our lives, whether we’re
aware of it or not. It happens to our friends, our
mothers, ourselves, and I have faith in women and
girls to know what's best for them, whether that's
terminating an unplanned pregnancy, raising a child
or giving a baby up for adoption. Anyone who thinks
the choice is easy hasn't sat with an anguished friend
(or daughter, sister, wife or girlfriend) as they
struggled to make that decision.
Who are you or I to tell any woman what's in her
best interest? What freedom does she have without
the core right of bodily integrity? Yet many governments
feel this most personal decision isn't one a woman
should have. Several countries that consider themselves
democracies have tried to curtail choice or cut if
off completely. In the United States many individual
states have severely restricted access to abortion
procedures. In Canada, a country which currently has
no criminal law restricting abortion, the province
of Prince Edward Island refuses to provide any abortion
services, meaning women must travel to neighboring
provinces for procedures. Abortion is legal in New
Zealand, but only if two certifying consultants agree
that a pregnancy will either physically or psychologically
endanger a woman's health.
Ireland has even less regard for its female citizens'
ability to make decisions about their own bodies.
Abortion is illegal even in cases of threatened suicide
and only permitted when a woman's life is threatened
by grievous medical risk. This has resulted in a steady
stream of Irish women (approximately
7,000 a year, the majority of whom are married and
already have children) traveling to Great Britain
for abortions.
I believe Irish women shouldn't have to travel to
exercise choice. I don't believe women anywhere should
be subjected to unsafe, possibly fatal abortions because
you or I may not agree with their choice to terminate.
On this side of the Atlantic, I hope we never see
Roe
v. Wade overturned or watch Canada
abolish legal abortion but we can't afford to
be complacent and assume this will never happen. We
saw how reproductive health options in the United
States narrowed under George Bush’s government
as he loaded the supreme court with anti-choice judges;
championed abstinence only education which keeps young
people in the dark concerning accurate information
about preventing pregnancy and avoiding sexually transmitted
infections; and reinstated the Global
Gag Rule which blocks access to birth control
to thousands of women around the world. At home 87%
of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion
provider.
But choice isn’t just about access to safe,
legal abortions. It’s about health, information
and real options, and it’s of the utmost importance
that we vote in governments that support all of these
and that we continue to call attention to these issues
and don’t allow them to fall through the cracks.
We need to vote for and hold to account governments
that will support the wide availability of emergency
contraception to prevent pregnancy, comprehensive
sex education (we already know the abstinence only
variety doesn't work!),
committed anti-violence (a 2007 study found that
that a quarter of teenage girls with histories of
abusive relationships said that their abusive partners
had “tried to get them pregnant by manipulating
condom use, sabotaging birth control, and making explicit
statements about wanting them to become pregnant.”)
and anti-poverty strategies and access to affordable
contraception and medical treatment for all women.
We need to lobby for changes that will ensure the
minimum amount of women possible suffer unwanted pregnancies
and that every woman who wishes to keep her baby will
be assured of good health care and not be condemned
to poverty by her choice.
And in the inevitable event that women suffer unwanted
pregnancies despite the implementation of the above
safeguards (because the reproductive years are long,
mistakes happen and sometimes sexual assault denies
women a choice) we need to allow women access to safe
abortions, not punish them by forcing them to have
unwanted children or in effect push them into back
alley procedures.
Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it but it
does place women’s well-being – and sometimes
their very lives – at risk. We don’t have
to feel that we’d make the same choice about
a pregnancy as someone else to support a woman’s
right to choose. With what’s at stake how can
we possibly afford not to support choice?

- See more at: file:///C:/Users/Acer/Documents/ckkellymartinweb/archive2112.htm#sthash.Nq3Fvoxb.dpuf

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likes to write things down and is a firm believer in the John Lennon quote, "If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal." Her ninth young adult book, JUST LIKE YOU SAID IT WOULD BE, is packed with movie references and giddy love for Dublin, Ireland and her middle grade debut STRICKEN is a sci-fi adventure that happens to be set in Dublin too.

Canadian & Irish novelist of character-driven fiction from sci-fi to slice of life. Film school grad. Time traveller. Billy Bragg fan. Living with chronic illness. True believer in the John Lennon quote, “If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”